Add this with Power Stone to the list of odd forgotten games Capcom need to bring back.
Although as I type this I'm having a horrific image of Zack & Wiki in the RE engine.

A game that after finishing it again in 2022 I can confirm is deserving of being on all of those "Wii Hidden Gems" lists, whilst not perfect in it's execution it's a game that is up there with the most fun and interesting uses of motion controls.

The frustrations come with, not a lack of inaccuracy which all can suffer from, but for me with the attempt at putting some timing and reaction based bits in alongside auto fail options.
The final boss in particular I had to turn the console off yesterday because I didn't get the timing and didn't want to throw a wiimote out of my window.

The presentation of this game is great, the characters are joyful, the items work as you'd expect and most of the puzzles have a simple but fun logic to them only held back by the occasional experimentation which turns into failure (you'll become familiar with the restart screen).

The random map scouting collectathon thing feels a bit weak and tacked on but "content" wise there is a decent amount of stages, some fun variation, funny bosses and even some hidden stuff for after if you so desire.

If you hate motion controls this game is clearly not for you but do not except to be standing up doing bowling poses.
If you are fine with them, you need to get this played.
Frustration can happen like any point n click which this game definitely shares DNA with but the internal hint system is very generous and hey, it's fifteen years old you can look up a guide if you like. I won't tell.

All Elite Wrestling “Where the best wrestle” but clearly not where the best games come from.

Off the top I have to say that I am a fan of AEW. Been a wrestling fan for a long time and whilst AEW is not perfect its creation in 2019 was the breath of fresh air I and many wrestling fans needed.
WWE has never gone away and much like we see in any industry, when one company is clearly in the lead they get cocky, they’re too relaxed and the product starts to suffer.
Sure there are alternatives, I kept up with multiple UK independent promotions before WWE ruined many of them and I was well acquainted with New Japan and other US based promotions growing in the shadows.
Surviving off of these promotions as a fan though wasn’t quite enough, it’d be like using itch as your only source of gaming, plenty of good stuff but you’d be missing that “bite” of something with a bigger budget.

Now wrestling aside, what AEW coming into existence and thriving meant was eventually we would get another wrestling game that had money behind it. Years of very average WWE 2K games had passed, each feeling more or less the same if not worse, and none ever catching the enjoyment of (rose-tinted glasses fully on) No Mercy and the Smackdown games of the earlier Playstations.

AEW: Fight Forever sounded great on paper, Kenny Omega one of the top stars of the promotion and avid gaming nerd lead the charge in the public facing realm and he spoke up everything wrestling and wrestling game fans were wanting.
A little less simulation, a bit more arcade, bringing in people who worked on the legendary No Mercy but with modern sensibilities. It was going to be perfect.

Delay after delay and Fight Forever eventually hits the shelves and well, it stinks.

The basic grappling mechanics, the different fighting types and the styling of the N64 was there.
It just feels so basic, and old. Perhaps it was a monkey paw situation?
Graphically it looks fine, the character models are slightly more “arcadey” and exaggerated, in comparison to the WWE games it looks worse but arguably has a little more soul.
Everything around it however also looks worse, the crowd, the weapons and effects it all feels so trimmed back.

If you’re not a wrestling fan this may not bother you, but the roster is out-of-date and it was at launch.
This is always going to happen with contracts expiring, wrestlers retiring etc. but this was noticeable then and even worse now even with the potential for DLC additions.

As the game is not on Playstation’s “Essential” tier level of the online service I decided to give this another go, take a wrestler through the campaign of “Road to the Elite” and this is where I, a person who is not a fan of the WWE 2K games, was even more disappointed.
The campaigns in the 2K games are very silly but fun, a good bit of voice acting and however stupid a real story arc.
Road to the Elite does have multiple choices and paths you can take but the story is so simple and each block feels mostly unconnected that you are never invested. The comedy is also somehow worse.
It almost feels like the developers spent more time researching what food your wrestler can eat in each town more than building a narrative.

One thing Fight Forever boasts is a slew of mini-games and I am going to be simple and straight with you here, they are also trash. I had an ok time doing a short quiz, and some spot the difference, but any of the games which involved moving a wrestler round in the usual fashion, perhaps collecting coins or throwing bombs just felt crap and random - like the very worst stages of a Mario Party.

I understand wanting a unique selling point, but I wish they had used the resources elsewhere and the game had me feeling this at many points. Information in the campaign, spotlights for content creators, more music than you’ll ever get to appreciate. Fight Forever feels like the case of too many cooks.

An added USP that this title has added since release is the Stadium Stampede mode and is perhaps why they seemingly are wanting to get this on to the subscriptions services as it’s a Battle Royale mode. Not to be confused with the match type.

Stadium Stampede mode has 30 players online, running around a full stadium, collecting weapons, power-ups and even getting to ride horses and golf carts.
It has your typical closing circle and a variety of free-for-all and team choices.
As far as my time with Fight Forever goes, this is where I had the most fun, but do not be mistaken. It’s not good.
At this point it’s more a wrestling skin on a really underbaked Fortnite rip-off and we’ve already had a far more detailed wrestling themed Battle Royale live and die in Rumbleverse.
This mode has all the starting blocks here, some variation, upgrade trees for replayability, simple controls and silly things to keep even the most casual gamer amused but it all feels, like the main game, so stripped back and quite cheap.

Sadly the dream of a new big money wrestling game to contend with 2K and for rising tides to lift all ships is just that, a dream, for now.
AEW is five years old now as a company and it has released many other video games including Fight Forever, but each of them makes the awful tasting pill that is this game even harder to swallow. They’re all mobile, gacha, gambling, ugly cash-ins with the latest potentially having NFTs?
What a mess.
Take me back to that moment where Kenny Omega first announced AEW Games on YouTube where I was feeling positive and that something good was coming because I can’t see going back.

TLDR:
AEW: Fight Forever? More like AEW: Shite Forever!

When it comes to what I look for in a game, it is much easier for me to state what I would avoid over what I like. One recurring thing that I love though is innovation, fresh new takes and great ideas. I would rather a game was inventive than be a shiny blockbuster that doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
Metroidvanias are a genre that has been extremely popular, especially in the “indie space” so seeing any sort of true innovation there is a pleasant surprise.

Invention and innovation are Ultros’ greatest strengths.
At a glance you would maybe first say it’s the stunning art of “ElHuervo” the same artist behind a lot of Hotline Miami’s unique look.
The art is beautiful, the world is full of colour and feels squidgy and organic. The character and monster designs are great, and it is a part that truly does stand out.
However, I cannot say it is the game’s greatest strength because sadly it can cause irritations. The game even admits to this by giving you options to make things in the fore and background look more separate because sometimes the visual splendour is too much to parse.
Many background items and things you can break (with no real gain) look too much like items that can be picked up and whilst the assets are good this causes some friction within the gameplay that does not need to be there.

The organic feel of Ultros ties greatly into its themes and mechanics which is where I find putting the game on a pedestal much easier.
Ultros is a Metroidvania but it is also a time-loop game, it has some sparing roguelite elements with an upgrade system that can be locked to permanent after a time but the real intrigue with the game when a loop happens is how you interact with the world.
In a surprise twist that I didn't see coming when I first booted up Ultros is that the game has gardening mechanics.
Throughout the world there are patches of land where seeds can be planted, different seeds create different plants and these plants can help the protagonist traverse.
Much like in real life though, plants and trees grow over time and when you first experience a time loop you quickly realise that you may have started from zero but the plants have continued to grow. Some of these may be as simple as taller tree-like obstacles that can now be used to reach higher points you couldn’t previously reach, sometimes these plants grow vines that can be swung from or break through barricades that originally blocked your path.
These additions to traversal not only open up more of the game’s world to you but speed up your progress making it simpler to do the earlier parts that you have done before such as obtaining your blade.

Speaking of blades, Ultros is a close quarters combat game. It has an enjoyable dodge and quick strike mechanic and a slew of fun upgrades that allow you to juggle and dive kick your enemies amongst other things.
The combat is smooth and feels good to use but sadly never really hits much of a challenge.
Throughout the game are boss style encounters, a couple of which have some fun gimmicks to them but for the most part play out as you’d expect and sometimes just feel like a lengthy standard fight - they’re good but not so much of a highlight.

One mechanic the fighting does bring though is a great encouragement to change your styles up and not repeat the same combos. In Ultros, in order to heal and upgrade the protagonist eats - sometimes these are fruits of the plants you find and grow but others are meat and morsels of the enemies you’ve slain, to get the most tasty and nutritious parts you must use a plethora of attacks or else spamming the same buttons will give you some red goop.
Having the food tied into an upgrade system is a nice addition because it also means at points there is risk/reward for eating to level up versus saving for survival, while also later the opposite holds true where eating to clear up your inventory and level up doesn’t feel like you’re putting yourself at too much risk.

As I mention the inventory I feel I have to explain one of my biggest issues with Ultros.
Confusion.
I have already mentioned how sometimes the visuals do not help, the presentation of the story is also hard to understand and things such as the inventory do not clear up matters lore or mechanics wise well enough either.
Whilst playing Ultros, understanding the outline of the story it is trying to tell but being confused by its language I thought to myself “is this what Dark Souls is like for some people?”.
Yes, a Dark Souls comparison, the cliché of all video game reviews but one here that felt quite specific.
The obscure and ambiguous nature of Ultros had me struggle with its narrative but at times made the game difficult to play too, with a specific example of something I feel Dark Souls does that this doesn’t and to its detriment.
Item descriptions - planting seeds becomes far more important in the late game and knowing what each seed will grow to be is only really clear from its art. That should maybe be enough and arguably it is, however some things are so similar this isn’t enough.
Each seed has a different name but they aren’t really a clue to what they do, item descriptions here would not only help build the world but aid the player into moving forwards knowing they are doing what they are intending to do - instead each seed has the same “can be planted” description as one another.
Overall there is a line where you want a world to have its own language but not one that is so foreign the player cannot understand and sadly Ultros goes over it.

From this point on I will be spoiling part of Ultros, something that needs to be spoken about because it ties into its greatest strengths and weaknesses.
I will be speaking about endings, not specifically what happens but the journey to them and if you’ve understood the organic, killing, growing and time-looping themes of the game these are probably quite obvious but if not, and you want to discover for yourself, this is the time to leave.

Two words explain your quest in Ultros Destruction and Connection.
As you travel through Ultros you are searching for Shaman, green folk sat in coffin type displays.
Each time one of these is destroyed a new loop is triggered, some things change but your objective is clear, whilst the map may not be filled out where these shaman are is marked very early on so you need to get to all eight you can see.
Throughout these loops you are made aware that you want to sever the ties of these shaman as they tie-in to the summoning of the big interdimensional space monster Ultros themselves.
The simplest way to save the day being the destruction of these eight shaman through your knowledge gained during the loops and the upgrades you get to a small drone called an extractor.
The extractor is, without revealing specifics, where the metroidvania elements truly come in through a whole host of ways, some of which are very exciting and original, allow you to access places you previously couldn’t and tackle obstacles that got in your way - a few of these tied into the gardening.

Not each upgrade to the extractor is equal in terms of excitement but each does give you a great feeling of progress and spark thoughts in your mind of what you can now do.
Sadly though this feeling comes to an end when you’ve got them all and that may be earlier than you’d expect.

If Destruction is one way to end the game through destroying the shaman then it’s probably somewhat clear what Connection is about.
Returning to the point in where you found the shaman you can actually start to connect them to the centre, this is done via a “living network” which if the shaman are the nodes, the plants you have grown along your journey are the connectors.
This completely changes the game into something not combat focused at all. Rather than killing enemies you are encouraged to befriend them, feeding them so that they no longer attack and may also reveal new spots to garden - and this pacifist style extends to all elements of the world.
You’re rewarded for this in some areas as the living network being reconnected can also open doors and whilst it may be simple for you to find your way back to somewhere you have been you need to build this network without gaps and that is where the challenge lies.
A challenge or sadly, a faff.

The alternative “true ending” is something that I really applaud the game for as an idea, it turns the game on its head. It gives the story more interesting purpose and a better moral message than most.
In reality though, it becomes a slog too quickly. Having to start loops to see the consequences of your actions, changing what you have planted in fiddly ways with little help in terms of how things are marked or described. Spending so much time retreading the same ground over and over, it adds length to the game which may be viewed as value, but for me felt like it just outstayed its welcome to show that it was smart.

Metroidvanias at their best have a great flow of progression and sadly because all the major upgrades of the extractor are found when you’ve done the Destruction finish, you’re no longer getting those endorphins for what is 200% more game.

In the simplest terms my feelings on this game peaked at a 4.5 and came crashing down to a 3 as I struggled and grinded to get the last few plants down in the places the game wanted without guidance. As my playtime went from 7-8 hours for one ending to 20+ for the other, I questioned why I was even bothering and if I even liked the game.
Ultimately I do but I resent the game as much as I adore it.

Ultros is a recommendation from me, but purely because it does do so many smart and interesting things that are worth checking out.
The difficulty I find finishing here is giving advice on how someone else should finish the game.
It would be easy to say that if you do not connect with the gardening aspect in a significant way, play to the destruction ending and leave it - I just worry you’re missing not only things the game wants to show you but the things it’s trying to teach you too.

One of the things I love about discovering a new favourite is delving back into a back catalogue.
Be that with music, television, writers, artists, YouTube creators or games.
Not only do you feel like you’ve suddenly unlocked a treasure trove of new (to you) great things to enjoy but you’re setting yourself up for the future, having a name to follow that is likely to give you more things to enjoy.

Rocket Rat Games, a small (three person?) development team has become one of these.
I came a few weeks late to their most recent game, Cobalt Core, but fell in love with its ideas, style, music and mechanics. I wrote a glowing review here after I had squeezed almost everything I could out of it.

Enjoying Cobalt Core so much made me look into the back catalogue of the studio and I quickly added Sunshine Heavy Industries to my Steam Wishlist. It’s only around £12 and often on sale.

Going back and I have written about this with other games, I find it very enjoyable seeing a team develop. Sometimes a new project is so vastly different that you have to go beyond the surface to see this but with Sunshine to Cobalt the leaps are quite easily connected.

Where in Cobalt Core you are commanding ships in fights, Sunshine Heavy Industries is about building them.
Both games however, don’t quite take the first genre would you expect. Cobalt Core used card game mechanics for its dogfights and here, Sunshine is a pseudo-puzzle game as opposed to a straight up creation suite.

The mechanics for both games are quite simple but have a good level of depth and layer on new things as the games progress.
Music in both titles is fantastic, typically light-electronic music with an FTL-like feel, and art wise both share a visual identity, spaceships crewed by cute animal type folk that are quite chatty, usually silly and sometimes sarcastic. Clear, clean visuals with expressive characters and wonderful, interesting backgrounds.

All of these elements, Rocket Rat were already nailing early on with Sunshine, but every bit is improved by Cobalt. This does mean, playing in reverse, that Sunshine feels like a bit of a downgrade, the music and writing aren’t quite as good, the mechanics are not quite as smart but it is all still very much there and very much enjoyable.
It may sound like a disappointment but when you see how this small team could make two games in different genres but clearly evolve and improve so much within such a short amount of time, the future is bright.

Sunshine Heavy Industries is a simple, relaxing little puzzler. You run a (space)shipyard and get given requests to build ships.
When you accept these requests you are into the game. Along the left of the screen is a list of requests. At first this will just ask for things such as thrust, fuel and command - your engines, their tanks and the deck, with lovely windows, of the ship.
Quickly you are then introduced to other factors, perhaps the request asks for weapons, radars, experimental devices and more, each with their own restrictions you have to fulfil and all typically with a budget in mind.

To the right are dropdown menus for each of the bits and pieces you need, cargo, crew quarters, engines, pumps and more. Each of these have a size, a cost, some generate heat, some need energy, some give out radiation and this is where the puzzling comes in.

The middle of the screen is your workspace, the ships are made of squares and you need to create a 2D craft that hits all the marks whilst keeping it together and for things to not overlap or get in each other’s way. At the start the simplest thing is fuelling, both the engines and fuel tanks need pumps attached, but you quickly figure that one pump can connect these two pieces to save you buying more. Further in your weapons need energy and both the giant laser cannons and electric cores have heating issues and again, placing these two things close so not only do they work but a heatsink can touch both is your way forwards.

The creativity is here with how you decide to use your budget, how you like to align all your pieces but more often than not I did find my ships looking a little stupid.
At first this was a little disappointing but there became a charm to it and I loved that as the game progressed the background, showing space, would fill up with silhouettes of the ships I had built passing by. Some looked as I’d expect, a few early rocket-like designs looking quite phallic and even one looked like a giant toilet bowl. I couldn’t help but smile.

As you get deeper into the game some of these tasks feel more or less like puzzles.
Sometimes your budget is so great that you can make any shape or size of ship you’d like, conversely you are approached by characters who simply need a fix, you can’t move all their parts and are simply trying to rearrange parts.
This gives the game some nice variety and whilst all missions are not equally as enjoyable, each are fairly short so you’ll get stuck into something you really like sooner than later.

Finally, unlockable from the start but turned off in an option and recommended for when the story has finished are daily events. These have the usual scoreboards you’d expect and like some of my favourite chill puzzlers of the past, give you a reason to check in and something slightly different to do with the game each day.

Sunshine Heavy Industries has been an enjoyable step into the not-so-distant past and although mechanically I didn’t find it as fun or as engaging as Cobalt Core, I’ve still been having a great time and will probably be doing my dailies for at least a month or so.
Rocket Rat Games are one to keep an eye on, they’re new but they’ve got a great identity already and the quality speaks for itself. This game is a recommendation from me, but I will admit at the time of writing the indie space is popping off so maybe add it to your Wishlist and wait for a sale.

After finishing Arcade Paradise recently I was thinking about the arcade experiences I had in the past which are a rarity now.

Fighting games never went away and beat ‘em ups have had indie revivals here and there but light gun games that’s something that really doesn’t exist outside of their “evolved form” of VR shooters.
Konami and Sega killed it with this genre in the arcades with games such as: Point Blank, Time Crisis, House of the Dead, Virtua Cop, Silent Scope… who remembers Police 24/7? That game blew my mind at the time, a decade ahead of the Kinect.

The point in time I remember most about these were when the light guns came into our homes and offered “arcade accuracy”. Sure there were N Zaps and Meancers but the Playstation and Saturn eras, that was when for me it clicked the most.
Now as far as Arcade cabinets go I’ll take Point Blank over most, I also wouldn’t disagree with anyone who said Time Crisis was the king of the light gun games but for me my time with the Saturn and Dreamcast holds that place in my heart if not my head.
House of the Dead and Virtua Cop were series I played with pals to death, ports that were good even without guns because of the depth and ideas these games were bringing during this period.

All of this brings me a little further in time to the Wii and this game.
As CRTs started to disappear and flat screens and HD ready were the craze, light guns were no longer the plastic accessory people wanted - it was guitars.
Nintendo though, always stubbornly staying behind the curve were a shining beacon for the man who wanted to point a gun at his screen and the Wii and the zapper accessory if you wanted still allowed that to be a possibility.

I could continue to talk about other titles, the failures and successes, the ports and the strange tie-ins but I’m here to review Ghost Squad.

Ghost Squad is probably best thought of as a spiritual successor to Virtua Cop and much like the time of the Saturn, it’s really second fiddle to House of the Dead but for me is the heart over head choice.
There are only three levels but Ghost Squad loves to play with its arcade stylings by bringing variety in a lot of replayability.
Multiple routes add different directions and game play elements to missions where sometimes you’re not simply shooting terrorists but uncuffing hostages, disarming mines and more.
The more you play the more routes unlock and the more you play those the more weapons you unlock to change up play styles.

Ghost Squad on Wii goes as far as to add a Ninja Mode which replaces the protagonists, enemies and even some of the scenery with Ninja themed items, throwing stars and all.

To hit the credits in Ghost Squad takes maybe fifteen minutes, and that’s a complete guess because it flies by and is such a laugh you’re not checking your phone to see the time.
The alternate routes aren’t all as exciting as each other and sometimes feel as if they make little difference but really it doesn’t matter, you’ll be coming back to run through again and wanting to tag in some friends.
The game doesn’t take itself seriously, the villains feel like they’re pulled from B-rate action flicks and the voice acting matches with its terrible bluntness.
To think too deeply about this game would ruin it. It is more about how it feels and it is frictionless and joyful.

Ghost Squad is pure and it is fun. It’s not an all-timer stand out in what games should be and isn’t the best argument for why light gun games should still exist, but what it is, is a bloody good time.

You, a nondescript robed person awake in what seems to be some sort of sarcophagus, you wander down some stairs, through an arch and further up some stairs of a beautifully vibrant yellow world full of clean lines and strong shadows along with a lovely whistling tune that accompanies you. You eventually find yourself at a broken piece of wall that leads out to a glistening man made stream, possibly a canal and just a little further you come up to a door and your first interaction both literally with actions and also with the game's world and ideas.

Before you is a simple device with a handle and what seems to be a sign. Both the device and the handle share a simple two point gear stick-type marking but the sign has four icons. Four characters possibly?
These characters are certainly not latin-script, they’re not arabic or kanji.
It takes you little time to notice the four of them are in two sets of two and both pairs have the same glyph second.
Your protagonist opens a journal to take note of these and now you’re allowed to write whatever you want to relate to them, but what do they mean?
This here lies the puzzle and the main thrust of the game, you can take an educated guess, you can pull the lever to see what happens to further inform your decisions or you can leave it and move on to see if anything else can give you some context.

Not too far on you meet another character, seemingly a little stuck across the canal who speaks to you. The NPC says something shown to be one glyph, followed by another three, you know from your previous fun with the door and other levels that they want you to open a door.
Albert Mehrahian surmised that communication is only 7% words, that more than half of it is non-verbal while the rest was vocal.
The NPC seems to do a small bow and the tone of their voice is certainly not threatening so you can be sure that the thing to do, not only because you’re playing a video game but is right, is to help them.
Through a small series of one-sided conversations the two of you meet, they say the same glyph they first used when they saw you and leave.

After a group of interactions the protagonist notes down with illustrations some of the things they have seen and you can now assign the glyphs to these things.
If you had been making notes you’ll be placing things quite easily but even without you can use some process of elimination.
In a similar fashion to Obra Dinn’s rule of three, these double page spreads that typically are no more than a handful of pictures will not tell you if your guesses are right until you have them all.
Once this is done however each time you see or hear those glyphs again in the world you’ll have subtitles where not only your guesses are used but grammar is corrected because as you’ll be quickly reminded in Chants of Sennaar not all languages have the same sentence structure and grammar can change throughout.

Without ruining the beautiful sights, as you progress up the tower seemingly as with the whole game a reimagining of the biblical Tower of Babel (which is the land of Shinar), you’ll meet different people with different languages.
The game will not always make you start from scratch however as much as visiting foreign countries some signs and other things may show two sets of languages which will not perfectly translate but give you a huge head start into figuring out yet another language.

Each of these floors have different people and different vibes but they are all interconnected and they all look beautiful.
Chants of Sennaar is one of the best arguments for art direction over graphical oomph. I ran this game on a very underpowered laptop at higher settings with no hiccups, no issues, not even a slightly hot machine. Simple may sometimes come across as an insult, but it is far from it here.

Whilst visiting these sights and untangling the puzzle of new languages the only small fly in the ointment swims up to the surface in the form of stealth sections.
I understand those two words alone will be enough to put people into a state of shock, but do not be worried. While the stealth sections are by no means fun or something ever worth thinking about they do at least fit within what is happening and are short and forgiving.

Chants of Sennaar is a beautiful and wonderful game that gives you the right amount of head scratching alongside the joy of feeling like a genius when you get something right or you start to feel you’ve cracked the code.
While occasionally you may find yourself simply guessing in a poor process of elimination, much more often you will notice patterns in the glyphs, how they relate, where they are and when they are used. Your guesses will be more and more educated and very rarely a shot in the dark and even if you are struggling to see what the game is trying to show you the Obra Dinn-like journal will always give you a fighting chance.

Chants of Sennaar doesn’t just play and teach us with the wonders of translation, it shows how it can connect us all throughout its strong, but again simple, narrative and this allows the game to not only let you think “I’m a genius” but quite a lot of the time that things can be nice and you’re doing good in this virtual world.

Once it’s all said and done this game will stick with you will feel good about yourself and that you’ve spent your time wisely and that is something that’s not always easy to say with a straight face when talking about video games.

So come on, you should really give this game a Chants.

Bigger doesn’t always mean better. A cliché to kick off the review but it’s a fitting single line summary of how I feel when speaking about Lone Sails sequel.

FAR: Lone Sails was a special experience for me, both in just watching it streamed as mentioned in my review of that title and playing it for myself.
To this day I still play the OST while writing journals for my education, and occasionally depending on mood and my writing subject the music takes me to a place that I find myself getting very glassy eyed.

To hit that high again with a sequel was probably an impossibility and it pains me to say that in fact, it was.
Changing Tides is still a fantastic game in its own right, cleverly keeping the formula of controlling a vehicle, exploring an interesting unknown land and going on a journey, whilst changing up the types of scenery and the vehicular partner enough to be fresh.

Every review I write may be the first of mine that someone has read and I can only apologise if I lack the words for explaining this game, but rather than repeat myself I feel that as important as it is to play these games in order, it is to read my thoughts on them.

Changing Tides, rather than having a “car” like the first, you have more of a “boat”.
You’re still collecting junk which can be used for fuel or saved if you like, you still have nature as a pushing force as well as engineering and the places it goes in terms of travel are arguably more interesting and diverse.
However again, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.
I found this vehicle a lot more hassle, this not only gives some unwanted friction but doesn’t help build the bond I found myself having in the first FAR title.
What also doesn’t really help with this is I felt like I spent much more time away from my motorised-mate in this game than I did the first.
Swimming beneath the sea and doing some mild puzzles and platforming isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. Puzzles are predictable, some reveals are astounding and that scale is one place where Changing Tides does trump Lone Sails but the emotional connection to the journey feeling less didn’t help those moments stick.

Joel Schoch returns to play another beautiful, lonely, sometimes sad and sometimes uplifting OST and much like Lone Sails I can see myself listening to this when writing in the future.
An issue though, not of the music itself, is the weird lack of it in places.
There are points where silence is powerful but it felt too often, almost as if maybe the game was broken.

FAR: Changing Tides may not hold a place in my heart like Lone Sails did, but I had a lovely time and the ending, which I will not spoil, will at least be something that does stick with me. Powerful stuff.

Changing Tides is worth your time, but sadly it does almost everything worse than its predecessor, not terribly so but enough that it loses some magic.
I can only theorise that perhaps the four year gap between games gave the studio time to overthink what they wanted to do, what they wanted to say and what they were making.

I will take a FAR 3 though. Please and thank you.

One of the themes of this year in gaming, for me, is to experience more from Cing, a defunct studio which I love almost solely on the basis of two games; Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Last Window: The Secret of Cape West.

Those two games to me are five star titles, not only are they great stories full of wonderful writing, characters and fun puzzles but they do something I’m a big fan of and that’s use the hardware they were designed for in fun and interesting ways.
I’m a “waggle defender”. I love the games of Nintendo hardware where non-first party developers bothered to use what was unique rather than something that could be easily ported to any machine.

Cing are King when it comes to this on DS and in a previous backloggd review, I showed they were pretty good at it on Wii too.

So yes, I played the games in the wrong order and yes completing Another Code R did spoil a minor bit of plot for Another Code: Two Memories but it did not ruin my enjoyment.

Much like the Wii sequel, you take on the role of Ashley who in this title is thirteen years old. She is called to Blood Edward Island to meet with her father who she has not seen in over a decade.
She’s there not only to find out why he has been gone so long, but anything she can about the death of her mother which took place a little while before dad up and left.
The hook? Ashley has been sent a machine called a DAS that looks strangely familiar to you (the player) and this device has messages for you, lets you store photos and then throughout the game aids you in solving puzzles.

I’m a sucker for reflecting the tech the player is using in the game, trying to break the walls of what’s in and outside of the story down.
This game doesn’t do that too deeply outside of aesthetics but as you search Blood Edward Island, meeting a friend, learning the island’s history and uncovering its secrets you get to use the DS in a few unique ways which don’t include simply button presses.

Cing would go on to do these things again and do them better in Hotel Dusk and really those words can be applied to almost every aspect of the game.
Art, music, characters, writing, plot - all of these factors are great in Another Code, it's just that they become excellent in the future.
In a way maybe deciding on how good a game is based on something that came out in its future is unfair but that is what we’re working with and whilst Another Code is brilliant and a worthwhile little gem it’s not a great, expansive or as nice and clever as Hotel Dusk so can’t be placed at those same heights.

Another Code is simple in a lot of ways, to some that would be a fault. The game and the story it tells is quite linear and the cast of characters is fairly small and even where it does expand with the former residents of Blood Edward Island’s history it’s less revelations and more reflections.
The game however is short and that is not an issue, in under five hours it tells a great tale and limiting its scope means that it doesn’t feel baggy or out stay its welcome.
The only case where an eye-roll of boredom ever happened would be clicking on something by accident and being stuck in a little bit of text I’d already read.

I had a great time with Another Code and it was very pleasant going back into Cing’s catalogue and seeing the steps they took to get to where they were with one of my all-timers.

Maybe it’s time to go even further back and play Glass Rose? I’m not sure if I am that dedicated.

I find the word ‘perspective’ to be an ever fascinating one, a noun with two meanings that conjure up such strong imagery, imagination and long thought processes.

On the more clinical side, perspective is simply art representing three-dimensions in two-dimensional ways so that you can see how things relate… which is interesting.
Interesting because the deeper version of the word encompasses feelings, people’s attitudes and point of views on anything and everything, life if we want to boil it down to a single word.

Small Saga has a lot of interesting perspectives.
Visually it shows a world that we as humans live in but from the view of a few inches tall, that of rodents - mice, rats, moles and more.
This perspective is not just visual but asks the question how would these animals view the rest of the world, if they had the cognition of a human - including not only other animals and their surroundings but also humans themselves.

This is the simple and smart appeal of Small Saga. A JRPG-lite with classic fantasy archetypes, kings, warriors, knights, mages, bards and more but with mice, rats and other small creatures.
Much like some of the best JRPGs of the past, our protagonist Verm’s goal is to, in search of revenge, kill a god!
The Yellow God, here however, is a human in yellow coveralls and a mask. This yellow god filled a land, seemingly heaven, full of all the seeds and grain a mouse could want full of a terrible fog and nasty traps - as a human being playing this game however, you realise that heaven is a supermarket aisle and this Yellow God and his fog are simply - pest control.

The different perspectives Small Saga uses though are not all world building, they don’t just pose questions about “what does a mouse think a cat is?” but brings in conversations about a whole host of much more serious matters, minorities, diversities, class, gender, sexuality and how these things are perceived and looked at by different views.

It is strange, because in 2023 it is not rare for a game to “be woke” as morons may say, by including queer relationships, characters with disabilities and to make anti-fascist statements but something about how it is written and how it is woven into this world made it stick with me more personally than many of these more outright queer etc. games do.
Perhaps it’s because the game isn’t trying to be about these things, these things just are.
Perhaps because Small Saga’s world feels closer to home, the world (and it’s map) are actually London and because of that the cast has a great diverse range of character voices written with quality dialogue that includes, English, Welsh and Scottish slang, amongst more, that makes it all feel that much more real for me - an English lad, with Scottish family and friends, Welsh pals and a diverse range of people I call friends from all of the pre-mentioned groups.

Although as an aside, do Scottish people actually say “Bampot”? It’s a term I know of and heard, but only really as a joke, usually of a Scot doing an exaggerated impression of a specific kind of Scot.

Before I move to more granular and mechanical impressions, I need to stop and state that Small Saga’s world, characters and ideas within that setting are excellent and the true selling point of this game. Games are not always about what you are doing, but I appreciate that simply enjoying a story isn’t always enough for some when taking part in this medium.
Small Saga’s tale is great, it is somewhat of a simple hero's journey but it makes great points and has inventive ideas along the way. Any time the word “simple” comes to mind in terms of story, it is maybe better read as “nice and digestible” - the game never becomes bloated, it respects you but also has a few optional moments if you would like more from the world and your runtime.

JRPG is the short-hand for how I’ve explained what genre this game is. @SketchyJeremy the games developer is evidently not Japanese so turn-based, is a more accurate description but clear inspiration has been taken from the JRPG genre, Mario RPG and Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light and more.

The Turn-based combat system is one that is simple to grasp, heroes have hit points and action points, moves take action points to use and hit points are as always your life.
Turns start from your team, starting right and moving left until your actions are made and the enemies respond. Within this your heroes can aid each other with buffs, more AP, more HP and even extra turns and you quickly find yourself following a formula to efficiently defeat the opposing side.
The characters you gain access to include, a warrior, a pyromancer, a bard and more. These work exactly how you’d expect if you’ve ever played a game like this which is comforting but a little too frictionless.

Small Saga forgoes any potential “grinding” as there are no random encounters and levelling up happens at specific points and after particular battles.
When you do get to level you have access to a grid that does branch into different areas allowing you a choice of not just do you want attack strength or more HP but also which abilities you would like your characters to learn. The other nice thing about this grid is you can respec at any time so there is no stress if you wish you went down a different path.
Lastly on the character customisation front, each hero has a weapon, armour (just one set) and two accessories which are consumable which refill after each fight.

Overall this combat is clean and simple, which is good, the fights look great - some brilliant use of visual perspective, fonts, and even some fun additions later so not all fights are exactly the same but within this combat is one of Small Saga’s biggest issues and that is lack of challenge.

To be so frictionless makes any encounters outside of bosses quite boring, and even within some they are over so quickly you don’t get a chance to appreciate them.
Over my entire playthrough I saw the game over screen twice. Once was due to a mis click in a timed event and the second was a poor attempt at an optional boss that really was down to me running even this impressive looking encounter on auto-pilot and not engaging with it fully.
I hope in the future there is a patch for some difficulty sliders because whilst having a sub-8 hour game feel quite frictionless is nice the complete lack of challenge almost makes you question what is the point.

Outside of combat, mechanically there are a few side-objectives. Most of which are sadly just fetch quests, there is some good storytelling within but the variety is somewhat lacking, a maze and a couple of rhythm game bits and that is your lot.
It’s a shame because I don’t think Small Saga “needs” anything more, but it is hard to praise the game from this side of things when really there is nothing new or interesting to prop it up in discussion.

Really, Small Saga is about the experience in art, music and writing. The combat and any “gameplay” functions are more a way to keep you engaged outside of just walking about and reading and this is fine.
I thoroughly enjoyed Small Saga and would heartily recommend it, but I cannot rate it so high especially when even this year other small studios (maybe not as small) have released more full and interesting games in the JRPG space. It is all remarkably close and for the asking price this game should still be on your Steam Wishlist after reading this.
Just don’t expect a GOTY, mind-blowing, world altering time - expect a very nice, very enjoyable little tale about a mouse with a penknife and go from there.

Variety is the spice of life and whilst this game concentrates on one seasoning executed very well it never forgets that.

Pepper Grinder see’s you control the drill totting Pepper, burrowing through dirt, under the water, between lava and crumbling ice.
Many of the platforming level archetypes are here but due to the rapid drilling versus precision platforming Pepper Grinder finds a way for this classic imagery to feel original in many places.

Holding the trigger on your controller of choice has you bury deep into dirt with constant momentum, with movement and turning circles reminiscent of Ecco the Dolphin, one of the game’s many inspirations.
It is key that any game feels good in the hand and this genre can live or die on it, thankfully the feeling of flow you find yourself in drilling, flying through the air into other bits of ground, avoiding obstacles and using varying devices or gimmicks is exactly where you want it to be.
Occasionally the speed can feel frantic, the turning circles may not feel tight enough, the distance you jump may seem too much but rarely does it ever feel like it’s anything but a mistake of yours and the game is very forgiving with its checkpointing.

A small area where the fault does not feel like it is on the player is the questionable hitboxes of enemies. Nearly all of the Narlings, the small narwhal-goblin hybrid type enemies are splatted in a single hit, but they occasionally wield equipment to halt your progress. Expected and not unwanted but the consistency of who hits first and where the enemies are vulnerable doesn’t always seem to watch and that perfect flow state hitting a brick wall is an irritation this game would be better for without.

Speaking of enemies, the bosses of Pepper Grinder are fun and varied. A lot of pattern remembering as expected but diverse in style, looks and set up with the difficulty of them rising to a real peak for the final encounter.
The only disappointment is that there aren't many, an issue the game has as a whole.

I find it difficult to complain about a game being short, especially when it is so tight.
Each stage in Pepper Grinder brings new and interesting ideas, a strength of variety that the best Nintendo games have and something I loved about last year’s Pizza Tower.
Being left wanting more is a good thing, but I can’t help but feel like this game is one world and a handful of stages too short.

Pepper Grinder does however give you a reason to go back. Each level has five hidden skull coins, a staple of any platformer and with these you can unlock some palette swaps and a hidden level in each world which are typically some of the more fun and gimmick heavy driven stages in the game.
The treasure you collect, this game’s equivalent to Sonic’s rings and the like do not help you survive but allow you to buy stickers.
Stickers and sticker pages are Pepper Grinder’s fun take on a 2D photo mode but act like the sticker books you had as a kid, just with more variety, less permanence and glue-mark based mess.
The annoyance here though is you unlock stickers with coins using a gacha machine and trying to fill the pages feels too time consuming and at time of writing I don’t believe there’s a trick to stop getting repeats outside of trying again and again.

The stickers give you a reason to return to levels to grind treasure but as each stage is finished a time-attack is unlocked and for this podium of prizes additional special stickers and music tracks are obtained. The time-trials are where the game truly becomes “hardcore”, and this is one title I cannot wait to see in the hands of experienced speed-runners.

I mentioned music tracks and Pepper Grinder’s OST composed by XeeCee is one of its highlights. The tracks may not be as catchy as some classics but the variety from mad drum and bass to more lo-fi tracks depending on the stage are welcome and something I find myself wanting to go back to.

Pepper Grinder is a fun and sometimes furious, drilling platforming experience with interesting ideas and fun mechanics spread throughout. To spoil what the game brings in variety would spoil it but as well as stage variety Pepper gets to do a little more than you’d expect a drill normally would - at points making me grin from ear to ear as I realise what is happening.
A little too short with some minor annoyances in hitboxes and the curse of gacha but otherwise an early contender for GOTY and an easy recommendation.
One that may only slide down the mental list of good games this year because it is so brief and hasn’t quite changed the game or blown me away the way the previously mentioned Pizza Tower did. It comes close though, I’ll take a dash of pepper with my pizza - thank you very much!

I will start by saying Return to Grace isn’t great, but it is good. It’s a walking simulator that I know isn’t a genre that appeals to everyone, but it’s short and sweet with enough little bits of interactivity to keep the pace steady and not monotonous.

You take control of a future space archaeologist, Adie Ito, who’s ended up on Ganymede (one of Jupiter’s moons) at the resting place of Grace: an AI seemingly worshipped as a god.

Here there is no life left but you quickly discover a piece of Grace.
The first of which represents her logic processing and is quickly dubbed Logic as expected.
Throughout searching this retro-future facility you have different aspects of Grace come into existence all with distinct personality traits.
These characters (I guess technically character singular) are excellently presented, with a great variety of voice acting and all give different and interesting perspectives on what may have happened to Grace, her purpose and views on Adie herself.

Presentation isn’t just from great voice acting, Adie has a little computer mounted on her left wrist which is used for some puzzles but mostly shows simply differently expressive and coloured faces to represent each of these personalities you interact with.

Other interactions involve climbing, pulling levers, small button puzzles and a couple more interesting things that I don’t want to spoil from this game’s extremely short run-time.

Graphically the game is neat, smooth and shiny. Quality lighting and the aesthetic is somewhat 60’s sci-fi but with a good variety of interesting locals to keep you engaged.

If you enjoy walking simulators and especially if you have access to Game Pass this is worth a pick up.
It took me a little over two hours to get through and I did reload some saves to check out alternate choices which can end up with a couple of different endings.
Strangely Return to Grace is more full than you’d expect a two hour story to be in terms of little touches, variation of locations and characters but also feels fairly basic too.
It isn’t doing anything new or particularly innovative and the story is good but it’s a little predictable.
Return to Grace doesn’t feel like the clearly talented staff stretch out further than what they know they can do but while it means it doesn’t necessarily excite it does do everything to a level of quality that’ll not have you upset if you spent a couple of hours with it.

Until about two weeks ago I didn't even know this game existed.

I played a lot of the first game on my Game Boy Pocket and after my recent Nuzlocke run I fancied something else Pokémon that I knew wasn't as long or intense.

One google rabbit hole later and I discover that actually Japan got a sequel but it never made it outside of there, I think to myself "I might be able to play it untranslated, I'll give it a go" and thank my lucky stars I didn't have to.

It's a real shame this never did make it out of Japan officially because overall it's really quite good and a much better package than the first.
You have a much vaster pool of cards, the AI and/or the opponents decks seem much more competitive and there's twice as many locations and more than twice as many opponents to face.

What starts as a smart sequel reusing many many assets ends up becoming so much more.
The addition opponents who require you to fulfil certain deck requirements also means you're much more likely to experiment and this along with some additional rules with other opponents means there is a lot more variation.

The card game itself is unfortunately not the best, whilst I won't review the current state of that TCG I will say that it has all the problems from today plus a ton more from being a game in it's first years.
Things like coin flips, which there are a lot of, make games feel too based in variance and can cause frustration when the inevitable is being delayed.
A tip I would give is save often, because unlike a real game of cards you cannot scoop if you can see the writing on the wall (and nor will the opponent) and this can turn a fun session into a tiresome chore.

If like me though, you like Pokémon and you like card games - together or separately I'd encourage you to give it a shot.
It's got some great to terrible art but it's all so joyous.
It just makes me hope that maybe one day a third game will appear on the Switch for us all to enjoy.

The year of Luigi is over. The year of Wario is here, whether you, Nintendo or your little buddies like it or not.

Nintendo gave us a wee treat earlier in the year by allowing Nintendo Switch Online subscribers a chance to play, for me the first time, Wario Land 3.
As you’re here reading my words, then we may as well keep this about well… me, for the moment.
After playing Wario Land 3, or maybe before (but really what is time?) I was made aware of Pizza Tower - it looked WILD. Fast, frantic, like a 90’s cartoon come to life with all the excitement of that decade’s best platformers. It was obvious with its Italian chef protagonist it was making its inspirations known to all and the combination of these two made me dig out the 3DS and load up the GBA sequel of Wario Land 3 known to many as the best Wario Land, Wario Land 4.

I loved Wario Land 4, it did everything I loved that 3 and Shake Dimension (the 5th installment on Wii) did but better.
Could Nintendo do this again, no really could they please just for me?
Well ok, if not Nintendo, then here comes Tour De Pizza.
If not our lord and saviour Wario, a new hero emerges- Peppino Spaghetti.

Pizza Tower does what Wario Land as a series did and like 4 had done to 3, this improves and refines the formula into nothing short of a 2D platforming masterpiece.
It even has a golfing level, an obvious nod to the worst part of Wario Land 3 and it’s good.

Peppino is fast, faster than Sonic and dare I say more fun to control.
Peppino gets put in so many situations that cause him to have interesting and unique abilities he not only shows Wario up but I feel puts Kirby to shame.
Tears of the Kingdom may have a beautiful swelling and epic soundtrack but as far as 2023 goes so far - Pizza Tower has the best music because it absolutely slaps.

Pizza Tower's art is funny and unique, nostalgic while still being original. If you were a child during the 90s and don’t feel something positive when looking at the level screens or animations then you may be dead inside.

There are a small handful of 2D platform games I would consider, classics that have been released since 3D had taken over.
Your Rayman Origins/Legends, Celeste, Sonic Mania but to name a few and this game easily sits amongst them.

If I were to make a single complaint about the game, and I will, it’s that the bosses are a barrier.
It’s a strange complaint, I understand wanting a game to have challenges for the player to be able to push through, to learn its systems, but something every other level in the game does is against that, having Peppino invincible.
Truly I’d struggle to understand how anyone could get stuck on a normal stage - that allowance of failing to do the level fast, get any combos or find any secrets but still make it through is freeing however this reflects strangely on the bosses becoming a potential barrier and one that may stop some unforgiving or lazy players being able to see the later and even better stages of the later game.

Overall though, I love this game. I really hope we see it make it to consoles because if it weren’t for a couple of good friends getting me a steam code I may have forever been waiting for that moment.

It’s 2023, it’s the Year of Wario and it is Pizza Time!

As I start to think even a little deeply about this game and what I want to write about it, comparisons of other things I’ve played this year come to mind.
I could do a review that is essentially dunking on another game I played that wished it was Limbo, speak about how even some of that team’s designers have moved on and made a fantastic game rather than something mediocre but that doesn’t tell anyone reading about Cocoon bar some history.
Another line of thought is how the last puzzle game I played I think is technically worse in so many ways compared to Cocoon but actually I still prefer it, but again that tells you nothing about Cocoon it’s more looking at a world of puzzle games and how the genre can work.

Instead I have decided to put those thoughts in here, like spheres within spheres and for anyone who has played Cocoon already you can see that this is a very weak analogy on what Cocoon actually is about and does.

Cocoon is a puzzle adventure game, the main premise is that on certain points of a level pull yourself out of the world and into another leaving the world you were just in as a colourful sphere that not only can you hop back in with one of the most quick and beautiful transitions in gaming, you can pick up, move about and use within the new world, the new layer you are in.

To say Cocoon is mind-bending actually sells it quite short. Not since Portal have I found a game that stopped me in my tracks thinking about possibilities and consequences as much as this.
I’m not here dismissing the many other perspective shifting “Portal likes” we’ve had over the years, I’ve enjoyed them but although all these games at their heart are actually linear Portal and Cocoon are two titles which have sent my brain, my thoughts into a small rollercoaster ride of loops and it is brilliant.

At first it’s just a simple case of leaving a world, finding something in the new world, diving back into the old with the item to continue a path.
It quickly progresses on to then coming back out, moving that world around and using it to unlock things in the layer above/outside and even as I type this fairly simple scenario in the grand scheme of Cocoon I find I don’t really have the right words to describe things because they are not simple in any fashion.
Added layers of complexity build as the orb worlds become more layers deep, you’re juggling what you are using and where you are going.
Further progression leads these orbs into giving you traversal powers meaning you get to delve deeper into each of them and all the while this sounds incredibly deep and complex you never feel completely lost.

Outside of Cocoon having and executing its mind-melting ideas, the design of the game is so strong that the player should barely feel lost.
The soundscape helps guide you, little chimes tell you you’re on the right path, while physically the world moves makes backtracking impossible only to a point that you may need to go.
You may get stuck, but it is never physical, you will always find yourself in a place with all the tools you need and the only limit is your own mind which when solving leads to the beautiful eureka moments these games are made of.

Interactions are minimal, the game uses the stick and a single button your protagonist - a sort of bug-dude - flutters their wings when something can be activated they can clearly only carry a single thing and places to pop the orbs down are extremely clear.
Like the best puzzle games, simple controls and a lack of visual clutter allow you to focus and get into a flow.
The movement is simple but it feels nice, it’s smooth and paced perfectly and surprisingly comes into play in a way I was expecting as I started the game.
There are bosses.

I say bosses because this is the typical gaming terminology but like the great classic bosses of the 2D Zelda titles they are more about patterns and puzzles.
Your bug pal is never in fear of a game over, a boss will usually throw you back into a world/layer up so you need to restart. This could be irritating due to repetition but these battles are never too long and due to skill being more in pattern recognition each step generally gets quicker the more you do it.

As I come towards the end of my thoughts on Cocoon one final question pops into my mind, about a layer that encases the entirety of its universe; “does Cocoon have a story?”.
The answer simply is, yes. However, to explain the story is hard, I will admit I don’t have the strongest grasp on it, even a few days removed I think about what certain iconography may mean and the protagonist's role in the grand scheme.
If I were to be extremely broad in my explanation I would say the story shows the creation of a universe, its life sources, its guardians and its gods. The insect styling of not only the player character but the bosses and other surrounding things and another layer of thought is how many insects perform tasks sometimes unknowingly and how they have hierarchies too.
The world or worlds, are diverse, beautiful, they feel isolated but with a purpose and connection at the same time. All the time feeling cohesive and carrying you through with little irritation.

Cocoon is a game I believe everyone should have a look at if they can, it has a short run time and is “free” on Game Pass. Even if you are not into head scratching it is worth popping on just to see the wonderful visuals, hear the beautiful soundscape and witness the mind bending things the game does.
If anything for me personally I found the game didn’t have me scratching my head enough, there are points where I paused in astonishment realising what I had to do but the eureka moments felt less often than I would like - Cocoon’s eureka moments along with it presentation are flashier than other puzzlers but while I am not saying the game isn’t deep - style over substance could be argued comparing to other games within the genre.

Perhaps I need to give Cocoon more time before I finish this review but let it be known that the uncertainty in my mind isn’t whether or not Cocoon is good. Cocoon is great, I am just unsure on its level of greatness and in a few months time I’m sure it will be on top of many GOTY lists.

I'm glad I finally played this game, being a big fan of Cing, this was always a game I had meant to play through and was sure I'd started - I discovered I must've because the disk was still in my now packed away Wii.

There's something about the style or writing, the atmosphere and art direction about Cing that I just find magical.
The simple music, the sketches; I find it evocative but then I can't really put a finger on what.
I'd guess a big part now would be nostalgia and a yearning for another Kyle Hyde game but it's also a feeling I had when I played Hotel Dusk the first time.
I'm sure if I was more eloquent I could find the words.

Another Code: R for those not in the know is boiled down to its simplest terms a point and click adventure style game with Japanese visual novel leanings about a girl named Ashley searching to find more details on the death of her mother.
I won't go into details because explaining the story of a game that is majority story vs "gameplay" will ruin it, but the way the story progresses is a fantastic mystery novel-like tale, with a small cast of characters who are, in my opinion, all quite well realised with quality dialogue.

You learn a lot about Ashley as a person through her interactions with the world and the dozen or so characters, most importantly Matthew.
Matt, minor spoilers, is a younger lad who has run away from home looking for his father who went missing five years prior and the obvious similarities there create an interesting dynamic and a way to see an angle on Ashley you wouldn't typically.

Outside of talking and making a few conversational choices you're walking around the small area- done so by either using the d-pad or clicking the sides of the screen until you get to rooms you search with a pointer.
A lot of these areas are just to look at, flesh out the world. The rest are to find items which in a simple point and click style are there to solve puzzles.

When it comes to puzzles I personally found most of them a little too easy but I do have an uncommon enjoyment of them it seems.
The most difficult were due to my impatience because Cing loves to play with the hardware and a couple of things weren't as intuitive as I thought.
Counter to motion controls annoyance, much like Zack & Wiki you're not waving your arms around all the time and in fact even less so.
Also this game has the single most, what I would call a hype moment in Wii games, using hardware to solve a simple puzzle that genuinely eliminates any hard feelings I have for things where I had to hold still for longer than I'd thought.

The long and short of this is, if you dislike games with little in action then move on, however if you want a nice relaxing game with a well realised small contained world and cast of characters with a few fun puzzles and great atmosphere this is worth playing.

The saddest thing really, to end how I began this "review" is that Cing are no longer around and the game - whilst having a completely satisfying ending, feels like it was open for a third that we will most likely never see.